Letting Go

It's getting to be the time of year when leaf peepers are out in force, scoping out the Vermont foliage.  I know this because I saw all of them in the parking lot of the Ben & Jerry's factory on Thursday afternoon.  I, however, was the only one there who was waiting for the AAA guy to fix my dead jeep battery.  All in all it wasn't a terrible way to spend an afternoon, although Rabbit may disagree.

In other September news, I've got two more of my Aretha word paintings finished:

I've been posting these on Instagram and the Blues Brothers Official account has "liked" at least two of them, so there's a life goal achieved that I never knew I had.  Three more in this series to go.

Today I varnished the Best. Painting. Ever.  Okay, maybe not the best, but I really really love it.  I started out only knowing what colors I wanted to use - brown, red and something peachy.  The paint sat on my table for a couple of days while I thought about it, hoping a design idea would come to me.  I got nada so had to wing it.  Here's the final result:

And here's how it all went down:  staring at a blank canvas can be intimidating and since I had no idea how this painting was going to evolve I hoped getting the first bit of paint on there would spark something.  Anything.  I started with the brown (TMI side note: this particular brown paint is not as thick as my fave, which is like brownie batter, so after spreading the first layer around the sides of the canvas with my fingers I looked like a proctologist who forgot to wear gloves).  On went the rest of the brown, then the red, peach and a dark rose gold (the bits that look like copper in the photo).  Some blending, some texture and a sudden fierce desire to put a white hand print at the bottom.  The white circles came out of nowhere but as soon as they were on the canvas I knew the painting was called "Letting Go."

It's taken me a long time to be comfortable with having canvas texture visible in the final piece.  In fact, most of the time I still don't like it and with heavy body paint and a palette knife I can cover it easily.  Not so here but that's okay - there are places where you can see the weave of the canvas and other places where the paint is so thick I had to wait two extra days before I could add varnish.  Final shot, complete with professional photobomber: